ifixit

A busted phone usually leaves you with two options: an expensive and lengthy repair by the manufacturer or doing it yourself with potentially suspect parts. Motorola is getting together with iFixit to offer certified repair kits for some of its phones. You get OEM parts, tools, and instructions to get the job done.

iFixit has torn apart every major smartphone released over the past decade or so. The repair site recently posted a teardown of the Google Pixel 3 XL, giving some insight into what hardware the phone is using. Interestingly, iFixit discovered that the 3 XL uses an OLED panel from Samsung, not LG.

As is tradition, iFixit has torn the latest mobile device apart to see what makes it tick. The Note 9 has several distinctive features that set it apart from the Galaxy S phones, but it shares a lot as well. It even shares a repairability score: 4 out of 10.

Generally speaking, when there's a high-profile new handset, the folks at iFixit will take it apart to show us its guts. The OnePlus 6 is one such device. OnePlus's new notched beauty came out on the other side of the procedure with a pretty down-the-middle score of 5 out of 10.

When your smartphone gets old, you may pass it along to a relative, sell it to someone else, or chuck it in a drawer and forget about it. Not this guy though. He goes all iFixit on them, grabs his Philips screwdrivers and priers, and dismantles them down to their smallest components, then he hangs them on a wall like the nerdiest of all art collections.

Remember a few years ago when smartphone makers were just racing to have the most megapixels possible? Ah, those were quaint times. Now, it's about the number of cameras you can cram into a phone. Huawei is leading the pack with three rear cams on the P20 Pro, but how'd it manage that? The phone-destroyers at iFixit are here to find out. They've taken a P20 Pro apart to find out what's up.

The good folks at iFixit never miss a chance to pull out their trusty Philips screwdrivers and heat guns to tear apart the newest phone on the block, and this time is no different. The new Samsung Galaxy S9+ paid a visit to iFixit's labs and came out with a very mediocre 4 points out of 10 in repairability. For comparison, Google's Pixel 2 XL got an above-average score of 6, the Essential Phone received an abysmal 1, and Samsung's Galaxy Note8 also scored 4 out of 10.

In an effort to combat e-waste, Samsung and iFixit announced the "Galaxy Upcycling" initiative at the Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco. This initiative intends to allow users to develop ancillary uses for their old phones, and share the code on the Upcycling website, where other users can download and use these crowdsourced ideas. Among the ideas presented at the developer conference were Bitcoin mining clusters made from Galaxy S5 units, an arcade cabinet using a Galaxy tablet, and an IoT-connected fishtank. In addition to providing code downloads, the Upcycling website will also sell sensors and accessories for IoT-related projects.

As is tradition when a new phone is released, the Pixel 2 XL has appeared on the sacrificial altar of iFixit. Not only do we get to find out how easy this phone is to repair, it's a chance to see how things work in there. After tearing down Google's latest flagship, the team at iFixit has granted the phone a repairability score of 6 out of 10, which is better than many other devices.